Things to do

On Wed, Jan 30, 2013 at 2:48 PM, Jonathan Duncan
<jonathan at bluesunhosting.com> wrote:
>> Sounds logical and reasonable to me. The second step would be to help convince people that they actually do have the time and other resources to be involved.
>
When something is interesting enough, people make the time--people
make time for whatever is most important to them.
That being said, whatever project is picked must have enough value to
the participants that they will do it. Obviously, this means different
projects will garner different people--so back to step one: building a
list to pick from/vote on/discuss variations of.
Some ideas could be:
- pick a charity and help with their computing needs
- pick a struggling local business and help with their computing
needs/streamline their processes
- pick a school/public resource and audit/improve their computing security
- tutor youth or mentor adults outside our group looking to improve
their computing skills--basic usage skills or even full-on vocational
classes to expand their employment potential
- teach the boyscout computer merit badge class to a local troop
- build some widget and build up our own groups IP for contribution to
other projects (eg the flying stuff)
- build a complete voip call center
- demonstrate and maintain a current SEO techniques guideline
- build a security-audit recipe manual/guideline
I tend to be leaning towards community involvement on these--immediate
gains for the recipients. Meanwhile, doing these things could help
networking for any members seeking employment.
As for teaching, we already do that--at least among ourselves--so it
seems pretty straight forward to extend our offerings of expertise to
a wider audience.
Recording our contributions into a manual/guideline/something
published helps non-participants benefit, and may interest them in
contributing later.